HaikeLite HK29

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HaikeLite HK29 specifications

Brand & Model	HaikeLite HK29
LED	29*Samsung LH351D
Lumens	27,000 Lumens
Beam intensity	90,000 cd
Battery config.	3*21700 (button top)
Onboard charging	USB-C
Modes	5
Blinkies	Strobe
Reflector	OP
Waterproof	IPX7
Review publication date	Aug 2022

From what I’ve seen of HaikeLite over the past couple of years, the company has one goal: to put out as many lumens as possible. Pretty much every flashlight they make seems to be a lumen-monster.  And the new HK29 is no different. It packs a whopping 29 LEDs to make one intense, floody beam.  Most lumen-monsters focus only on lumens, which means they generally use cool white, low-CRI LEDs. The HaikeLite HK29 bucks that trend by using 90-CRI 5000K LH351D LEDs. A 90-CRI lumen-monster you say? Yes, yes, I did!

Package quality.

The HaikeLite HK29 arrived in a nondescript brown box with foam lining – pretty standard stuff for budget-conscious lights. Not that the HK29 is cheap, but the focus is more on value than on all-out quality. Inside the box was:

• HaikeLite HK29
• USB-A to USB-C cable
• USB-C to USB-C cable
• Strap
• Spare o-ring
• Manual (in Chinese only)

As you can imagine from the pictures, the HK29 is a chunker! The 3×21700 is girthy, and the head is considerably wider. There’s definitely a commanding heft about it. On one side of the head is the usual e-switch with a rubber cover, while the opposite side is occupied by a USB-C charging port.

While it looks pretty round, there are indents around the heatsink fins that keep the HaikeLite from rolling off a table. The base is very flat – a tail-standing champ.  Which is good, because you could very easily use this to light up a whole room with nice high-CRI light. Around the base of the light are four slots that you can use to attach the included strap. It’s no lanyard, this is a full-on strap. There is not a tripod mount, which could be pretty useful for a light of this size.

Given how heavy and bulky this thing is, I certainly wouldn’t just casually carry it around. Do you need to light up an entire corn field, football field, or your backyard? Need to light up the entire inside of a barn for a while? The HaikeLite HK29 has you covered. Just don’t get it too close to the dry hay.

According to NealsGadgets, the HaikeLite HK29 is made of 6063 aircraft aluminum. While it sounds fancy and all, that’s pretty standard but good. Neal also says that the coating is Hard Anodized Type III. That’s plausible, I suppose, but I am somewhat skeptical when any company I’m not familiar with claims HAIII. I’m not an anodizing expert so I’m not one to refute it I guess.

The machining is on the “blocky” side of things, which is befitting a flashlight of this stature. The battery tube has a square pattern with thin lines running its circumference. Overall, the HaikeLite HK29’s design and build quality seem… fine. There’s nothing wrong with it, it just doesn’t seem as inspired or refined as some other designs out there.

Warranty… that’s a good question. I don’t see anything about the warranty policy. If you buy the HK29 from Neal’s shop and you have any trouble, I’m sure you can just reach out to him for assistance.

The HaikeLite HK29 uses a crazy, spikey looking orange peel reflector. Situated in the reflector are a whopping 29 LEDs. And these aren’t just any LED, these are Samsung LH351D 5000K 90-CRI. Aside from the utmost tint snobs, I would say these have been some of the most popular LEDs for enthusiasts until the 519A burst onto the scene lately. The LH351D does a good job of providing a good amount of light for a 90-CRI LED, though it has a low R9 (red) rating.

All of these LEDs are covered up by a sheet of anti-reflective glass (green, per the Google-translated Chinese manual). The glass is held in place by a stainless bezel ring that has slight crenulations – just big enough so that you can see if the light is on while it’s facing head-down. The o-ring is GITD (glow in the dark) green.

Opple Light Master reading from Turbo mode at 3 meters:

• CCT: 4876K
• CRI: 95.4 Ra
• DUV: -0.0003

Dimensions: 

Dimension	Millimeters	Inches
Length	152	6.0
Head diameter	76	3.0
Body diameter	53	2.1

Weight: 

Weight	Grams	Oz.
Without battery:	583	20.6
With battery	795	28.0

Flashlight size comparison with its competition

Compared to other high-output flashlights

Group 1: Fenix LR50R, HaikeLite HK29, Astrolux MF01X

Group 2: Convoy 3X21A, HaikeLite HK29, Lumintop GT3 Pro, ThruNite TN36 Limited

The HK29 gives you two choices for modes: stepped or smooth ramping.  By default, it comes in smooth ramping, but I switched it over to stepped so I could get some repeatable figures.

Available modes: Moon (well, “Moon”), Low, Medium, High, Turbo

Available blinky modes: Strobe, SOS, tactical flashing

User interface:

From OFF:

• Single click:  turn on (last used mode)
• Double click:  Turbo
• Press and Hold >3 seconds: Lockout

From ON:

• Press and Hold: increase brightness
• 1 click:  turn off
• Double click: Turbo
• 3 clicks: switch between stepped and smooth ramping

Mode memory:

• Yes, there is mode memory

Shortcuts:

• To Turbo: double click from Off or On

Low voltage warning:

• There’s an indicator LED under the switch cover that is used to show the voltage:
  • < 3.2V, blue flashes
  • < 3V, red flashes
  • < 2.8V, It will automatically turn off

Strobe/blinkies

• From Turbo, double click to activate Strobe
• While in Strobe, double click to activate SOS
• While in SOS, double click to activate “tactical flashing” (tactical strobe)

Lock-out mode: 

• From Off, hold the button for >3 seconds, it’ll flash once to indicate it went to Lockout mode
• While locked out, hold for another >3 seconds to unlock

PWM

• I measured 39.5 kHz PWM, which is very fast – not visible to the naked eye

Additional info on the UI: 

• The UI is good but not great. I like that it’s a single click for on/off with a double click for Turbo. I miss a shortcut for the so-called Moon mode. Overall, not too bad.

The HaikeLite HK29 takes 3 button top 21700 batteries. For something this high-drain, you don’t really want protected batteries so that really limits your options. For this testing, I used Samsung 40T batteries that I had applied a “solder blob” to the top of – that works well.

In terms of charging, there is a USB-C port. HaikeLite included not one, but two charging cables: a USB-A to USB-C and a USB-C to USB-C. There seem to be three possible charging rates depending on the type of charger you have:

• 3A at 5V (15 watts)
• 2A at 9V (18 watts)
• Huawei SCP: 4.5A at 5V (22.5 watts)

Haikelite HK29 charging time

I didn’t have a Huawei charger, so I hooked up my 33 watt USB-PD charger and witnessed a charge rate of 1.92 amps at 8.9 volts for 17.5 watts. The charge cycle took 3 hours and 2 minutes, which seems pretty good for charging up three 21700 batteries. The ending charge voltage was 4.17 volts.

The HaikeLite HK29 also features a powerbank mode. While I didn’t measure the charge rate, plugging it into my Google Pixel 6 did result in a “charging rapidly” message, so it does appear to be fast charging in power bank mode.

Lux was measured by a UNI-T UT383 BT at 10 meters. Lumens were measured in a homemade lumen tube using a TSL2591 sensor, calibrated with a Maukka calibration light. The temperature was monitored with a MLX90614 IR temperature sensor. Three solder-blobbed Samsung 40T batteries were used.

Lumen measurements

Measurements take without fan cooling unless otherwise noted

Mode	Specs	turn on	30 sec	10 minutes
Moon	100 lm	50 lm	49 lm	–
Low	1,800 lm	738 lm	734 lm	–
Medium	4,000 lm	2,802 lm	2,727 lm	2,543 lm
High	7,000 lm	7,993 lm	7,560 lm	3,326 lm
Turbo, non-cooled	27,000 lm	27,837 lm	22,646 lm	3,290 lm
Turbo, fan-cooled	27,000 lm	28,564 lm	22,974 lm	6,728 lm

Parasitic drain:

• 66 µA

The HK29 gets HOT, despite the “temperature control protection”. HaikeLite says that once it reaches 55°C, it’ll reduce brightness down to 4,000 lumens, and then when it gets down to 48°C, it’ll increase the brightness again. That’s good and all, except this light can sustain 4,000 lumens and it gets heat saturated and then begins to overheat (at least for my comfort level). I don’t like running tests above 75°C. So when they get there, I pull the plug. In the Turbo test without any cooling, it took about 16 minutes to get to that point. High mode got there in 23 minutes. And while it was actually leveling off, I stopped the Medium test at 51 minutes because it got up to 75°C. That level may or may not be safe, but I really don’t think it’s good for the health of the batteries. So I also ran these tests with a small fan pointed at the lights to simulate an environment where perhaps there’s a nice breeze or something.

Battery Life: Runtime graphs

Note: HaikeLite didn’t provide any runtime duration figures. And since I didn’t feel comfortable running these for their entirety without fan cooling, the numbers are for the fan-cooled tests.

Mode	Specified	Measured runtime (ANSI)	Time till shut off
Moon	–	–	–
Low	–	–	–
Med	–	3 hr 7 min	3 hr 7 min
High	–	1 hr 2 min	1 hr 2 min
Turbo, fan-cooled	–	55 min	1 hr 2 min

ANSI FL1 standards: The runtime is measured until the light drops to 10% of its initial output (30 seconds after turning on). This does not mean that the flashlight is not usable anymore. The last column shows how long the light actually works till it shuts off. If there is a + symbol, it means that the test was stopped at that particular point, but the light was actually still running. This happens on certain occasions, with certain drivers, firmware, or batteries.

Peak beam intensity and beam distance measurements

Throw was tested at 10 meters with my UNI-T UT383 BT

Mode	Specs	Candela measured	Meters	Yards
Medium	–	8,800	188	205
High	–	19,000	276	302
Turbo	90,000 cd	63,300 cd	503 m	550 y

While lumens (at turn-on time, not ANSI) exceeded HaikeLite’s specs, the throw numbers really didn’t.  Candela was short 30% of spec.

Extra info: Peak beam distance according to ANSI FL1 standards: The calculated value of distance in meters at which the flashlight produces a light intensity of 0.25 lux. (0.25 lux is about the brightness of a full moon shining on an object).

The farm shed in these beamshots is 100 meters (109 yards) away. Pictures were taken with my Pixel 6 using ƒ/1.9, ⅕ second exposure time, and ISO200.

Beamshots compared to the following flashlights:

• HaikeLite HK29
• Astrolux MF01X
• Lumintop GT3 Pro
• Nightwatch NS73v1 Incredible
• Fenix LR50R

Disclaimer: This flashlight was sent to me for review at no cost by Nealsgadgets. I have not been paid to review, nor have I been holding back on problems or defects.